Surviving Progress

Surviving Progress, based on a book by Ronald Wright, takes a big-picture approach to explaining why past civilizations fell and how we, today, are replicating those conditions.

Wright takes us through key concepts, beginning with biology: we're running 21st-century software on Ice Age hardware that's geared for short-term thinking, not long-term. He also covers asset-stripping, out-of-touch, money-sucking oligarchies, progress traps (changes that bring benefits in small doses but lead to societal dead ends in the long run) and the effects of overpopulation.

All this is well illustrated by historical and contemporary examples including the Mayans, imperial Rome, present-day Brazil, China and more. Various experts chime in, including Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, David Suzuki and Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund.

In the end, some of them offer hope. Hawking believes we need to migrate to space. Craig Venter, who cracked the DNA code, pins his hopes on biomechanics. Others suggest we use less or transcend our hunter-gatherer origins. Personally, I lean toward a fast plague that takes out 90 per cent of us and gives the planet a millennium or two to recover.

Don't miss Wright's explanation, in the extras, of the fall of the Easter Islanders. It's a better example than any in the movie of just how insane a society can get in pursuit of senseless goals.